1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to systems and methods for monitoring delivery of digital content and, more particularly, to a method and system for allowing observation and diagnosis of the relative integrity of streaming content, including both the actual content and the infrastructure used to deliver the content, including a network, such as the Internet.
2. Description of Related Art
With the advent of the Internet and the World Wide Web and with advances in achieving ever increasing, affordable bandwidth, an industry has developed around the delivery of digital content, especially streaming media content. By way of example, streaming media may be used for any of a number of purposes, including entertainment, distance learning and corporate purposes. Entertainment companies stream movies, music, and sporting events, distance learning companies stream educational content, and corporations stream training materials, presentations and commercials.
Although some streaming media content providers may have relatively few items of content to provide, some content providers have hundreds, even thousands of content files. Storing and streaming this number of content files can be costly. Furthermore, streaming content requires a level of technical expertise often not found in companies focusing on creating content. Consequently, content creators and providers have turned to service providers to store and stream content on behalf of the content providers.
As more content providers turn to service providers for their streaming technology needs, service providers must manage more client accounts and greater numbers of content files. Furthermore, to maintain existing content provider clients and attract new clients, service providers must provide a content management system and delivery system that is reliable and is easy for the content providers to use.
Presently, there is no system that is capable of analyzing the relative integrity of a streaming media system. In general, as the number of users that use a system and the number of data files that are cataloged and indexed for use on a system increase, so too does the potential for poor performance. For example, too many users accessing a limited number of servers providing the streaming media creates a bottleneck that degrades the access time for each user. Similarly, a hardware conflict or malfunction on a particular server that provides streaming media content could seriously degrade system performance. Likewise, a path between the server and an individual user or a group of users could be damaged, either by accident or intentionally, thus degrading or even preventing access to the streaming media.
Accordingly, there remains a need for a system and method to diagnose the efficiency of a system that provides digital content, including streaming media, and identify potential points of failure or performance degradation within the system.